Mr. Obama wrote that he had decided to act because it was “in the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States.”. He also wrote that the deployment was justified by a law passed by Congress in May 2010, the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, which favored “increased, comprehensive U.S. efforts to help mitigate and eliminate the threat posed by the LRA to civilians and regional stability.”

Do you object to this intervention?

By the way, what religion is involved here? You can't tell from the linked NYT article. It's not that easy to Google for an answer either. Here's an article from 5 years ago in Christianity Today:

Kony... uses passages from the Pentateuch to justify mutilation and murder. He promotes a demonic spirituality crafted from an eclectic mix of Christianity, Islam, and African witchcraft.
Any resemblance to these religions is superficial: While the army observes rituals such as praying the rosary and bowing toward Mecca, there is no prescribed theology in the conventional sense. Kony's beliefs are a haphazard mix from the Bible and the Qur'an, tailored around his wishful thinking, personal desires, and practical needs of the moment. Jesus is the Son of God. But instead of saving the world from sin through his sacrificial love on the Cross, he is a source of power employed for killing those who oppose Kony. The Holy Spirit is not the Divine Comforter, but one who directs Kony's tactical military decisions.

Despite dabbling in the Bible and the Qur'an, Kony's real spiritual obsession is witchcraft. He burns toy military vehicles and figurines to predict the course of battles from their burn patterns. He uses reptiles in magic rituals to sicken those who anger him or to detect traitors in his midst. He claims to receive military direction from spirits of dead men from different countries, including Americans. He teaches that an impending apocalypse will usher in "The Silent World," where only primitive weapons, such as machetes and clubs, will bring victory.

"Nearly 90 percent of LRA fighters are enslaved children, kidnapped from their families...

"Under threat of death, LRA child soldiers attack villages, shooting and cutting off people's lips, ears, hands, feet, or breasts, at times force-feeding the severed body parts to victims' families. Some cut open the bellies of pregnant women and tear their babies out. Men and women are gang-raped. As a warning to those who might report them to Ugandan authorities, they bore holes in the lips of victims and padlock them shut. Victims are burned alive or beaten to death with machetes and clubs. The murderous task is considered properly executed only when the victim is mutilated beyond recognition and his or her blood spatters the killer's clothing.

"At St. Joseph's Hospital in Kitgum, I listened as relatives of four adult LRA victims recounted recent assaults. Many surviving victims cannot speak for themselves, because their lips have been sliced off. With their mouths reduced to gaping holes, they gazed at me with what combat veterans call the thousand-yard stare....

"Since 1986, the LRA is estimated to have abducted as many as 50,000 children. Many more Ugandans have been maimed and traumatized. About 1.6 million have been driven from their homes. The death toll from the conflict is estimated at more than 30,000 children.

"During attacks, LRA fighters, themselves traumatized captives, abduct more children and embark on a trek through the African bush that mimics the Bataan Death March in barbarity. Adult commanders force children to carry supplies for up to a week, marching from dawn to dusk on bare feet, without food or water in the equatorial heat. Potable water is reserved for commanders. Children have been forced to drink urine or drink from muddy ditches to survive. Their feet become infected and swollen. Any child who cannot keep pace is killed. Any child caught in an attempted escape is killed. Children may be murdered for crying or failing to obey commands quickly enough. Moreover, it is the other children who must execute the transgressors, which is done by hacking them to pieces with machetes or burning them alive.

"Commanders frequently compel children to kill their own siblings, lest family bonds supersede those to the LRA. Leaders demand every abducted child kill another child within a week of capture. Afterward, they're told they'll never be accepted by society because of their criminal acts, so they must stay with the LRA to survive. They coerce the children into identifying with their captors by emotionally blackmailing them with their own guilt."

Yes, I object to it strenuously. WTF is wrong with Obama that he unilaterally does all these military interventions? He should discuss it with congress first and get them to vote to agree to the military action.

This decision appears to have Samantha Powers "humanitarian intervention" fingerprints all over it. While there are countless atrocities being committed, its no different from Sudan, The Congo, or other hotspots.

I mentioned this to a friend this afternoon and he replied "Well...Uganda was originally tabbed as the site for Jewish resettlement."

OT: I'm putting the Blue Star image to rest this week. For the uninformed :) The blue star banner was started in the early 40's to signify that the household had a member serving in the armed forces. At one point we were a 2 star household. My wife retired this month, thus we are retiring our last star.

PS: The Gold Star, represents a household that has lost a family member in combat, hence, Gold Star Mother....

Ann's point is spot-on. I'd say the article actually understates the horror of what these monsters are doing. I have many dear friends in Uganda, including a doctor who has to patch up victims of LRA atrocities on a regular basis.

Most people in America (and Europe) have no conception of the utter evil of these people. A lion may tear your child to pieces, but it's just a lion. These, these ... whatever is worse than monsters ... do it on purpose.

This is an appropriate (and usually effective) projection of US power on the side of good.

I have a godson is special operations, so it's more than academic. We're also working very closely with France all across the sub-Sahara, and have been for nearly a decade -- which is why George Bush would not throw his France-hating base any "red meat" in the 2004 election.

Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said... Ann's point is spot-on. I'd say the article actually understates the horror of what these monsters are doing. I have many dear friends in Uganda, including a doctor who has to patch up victims of LRA atrocities on a regular basis.

Bart, Jason has it right, you and Ann wrong.

This has been going on for 10 year. Why now and why not consult with Congress. or why not a hellfire from a predator?

Why 100 troops instead of 1000?

My point is, either leave him alone, or get him from a UAV or send enough troops to minimze OUR losses...

We're sending a badly-needed SF company to a war several of those toy palace guard militaries in Europe might possibly be able to handle?

I appreciate Ann's point, but how is this in the interest of the US?

Or is this another incarnation of GodZero's idea of fairness?

John Lynch said...

Ann-

Yeah, read about the Congo sometime. Over 3 million dead, more than any war since 1945, and we hear nothing about it. The LRA is kind of a spin-off of the larger Central African collapse.

Sometimes a little imperialism is preferable to mass murder.

OK, fine, but double (better yet, triple) the size of the Army and Navy (we can cut the Departments of Education, Labor, Energy, HUD, and Transportation to cover it) and do it right.

Any place we figure "needs" our help becomes American soil once it's pacified. The people are converted to Christianity (the real stuff, none of Bobby Edgar's National Council of Churches). The American flag flies over it, anybody who calls any of our guys baby killers for partisan political reasons is tried for treason, and we get first dibs on any natural resources.

Eisenhower kept the United States OUT of Vietnam. Of course, this doesn't jibe with the leftist mythology about Republicans, but the facts don't lie. (Unlike you.)

In fact, John F. Kennedy, who is credited as the creator and chief proponent of "the domino theory", was the first president to put American soldiers on the ground in Vietnam, in 1961. He was no doubt inspired by the same humanitarian impulses that stir in the breast of Obama. It is destined to be yet another war started by a Democrat president, where blood of young men and women will flow until a Republican elected to stop it.

Sometimes evil needs to be told no. Because one child who is not kidnapped by this evil man and his manufactured demons, is a child who can grow up to help his country become something other than a horror show.

I would. Our military is going to be cut far too much as a result of all the borrowing and spending we've been engaged in over the last 2 years.

But, even without increasing spending much we could still do a lot of good.

It's often far more cost effective to send a few dozen soldiers than it would be to send a few thousand. A few highly qualified men go a long way when used as trainers, and it keeps the emphasis on the local forces. People ultimately have to defend themselves.

Limited interventions are actually a good idea, as long as we are willing to let them fail when the price gets too high. The wars in Libya and Kosovo cost us no lives but succeeded in their objectives. Wars are often driven by pride rather than by rational goals. Clinton's decision to leave Somalia in 1993 (after the mission changed to include impossible goals) was the right one in that context, if not in the larger context of encouraging Islamic radicals.

Not every war is WW2 (almost none are, actually) and an all-or-nothing approach to making war makes no sense. Large, total, wars are the results of horrible mistakes.

We need to get past Vietnam (and Iraq). There's no Cold War, no one is going to be funneling huge amounts of aid to the LRA, and we will be helping the government, not overthrowing it.

Americans aren't rational about using force. It's either too much or too little. Limited campaigns with limited goals when the circumstances are favorable are the way to succeed.

Obama's intervention in Libya succeeded if the goal was to remove Gaddaffi. Other goals, like ensuring a democratic successor state, are probably not achievable at a cost we're willing to pay. So we shouldn't pay it.

Oh, there's no argument this guy is one Right Royal Bastard. But... how is this any of our business? We don't have the resources to squash every bastard in the world, and even if we did there are always new ones to take their places. At any given time there are a dozen guys just like this running around in Africa.

It seems to be a pattern with this Obama. First there was the lawyerly weaseling on the War Powers Act in Libya, and now he's committing troops where the US has no interests at all, economic or security. If this is the standard for the use of military force then there is no standard, and Congress's war powers have dwindled away to literally nothing.

I started out saying hell no to this deployment of US troops, but after reading your linked articles, I don't know. It worries me that are are so few troops, don't want another Blackhawk Down situation.

Agreed it's a horror. Do you honestly think 100 troops is going to do any good? Do you think he owes Congress an explanation instead of a letter? Did anyone see this coming? Did he ever mention the crisis in any speech or press conference? Where is the U.N.? Where is anybody else?/

Didn't George Bush say: no matter who becomes President he will change when he sits here and reads what I read every morning?

Maybe Obama has changed and because of what he now knows he sincerely wants to act in these other countries. And as Commander in Chief he can act without Congress. So he does some good in Pakistan and Yemen and against the LRA etc. without bothering about Congress. But here's what bothers me. Why doesn't Obama try to win Congress over? Compare him with George Washington who always tried to win Congress over even when it totally disregarded him and the suffering Army as at Valley Forge. Compare him with Martin Luther King who used non violence to win Congress over to pass civil rights laws.

When the enemy thinks they can beat what's in front of them, they'll fight and fight hard. Sending enough force so that the enemy takes one look and says "aw shit" (or some comparable phrase in Urdu, Farsi, Arabic, Swahili, or whatever), drops their weapons, and throws up their hands is the best way to fight a war.

Eisenhower kept the United States OUT of Vietnam. Of course, this doesn't jibe with the leftist mythology about Republicans, but the facts don't lie. (Unlike you.)

Sorry, but you're wrong, Eisenhower sent the first military advisers to SVN in 1955. Yes, Kennedy and then Johnson escalated the conflict in ways that Eisenhower never could have anticipated, but that is the point of the comment. Big, messy interventions can start out small and innocuous.

I think that a limited number of surgical air strikes against his forces would be preferable, and in the long run less costly in lives for both the Africans and us. But that would result in some collateral damage, and our society is too stupid to understand the '100 civilian deaths now is better than 10,000 over the next 5 years'

If Obama is going to send US troops to risk their lives and to spend money we really don't have to spend anymore on missions of mercy like this, at least he should have the honesty not to lie to our faces and say it is "in the national security interests of the United States." BULL. SHIT. There is ZERO national security interest at stake.

I would like to hear Obama seriously try to defend this as a matter of *national security* for the United States. Whether this guy goes on doing his rottenness in Africa affects us not in any meaningful way.

And there are ALWAYS rotten characters in Africa. I suspect there always will be. We have got to get over this thing where we try to turn the rest of the world into some kind of suburban American white community. It can't be done.

I'm a vehement opponent of American intervention in most cases, including Libya most recently, but I think it's entirely appropriate for the US to send 100 advisors to help the regional military forces hunt down a nomadic, child-kidnapping, village-massacring, killer.

Note that in this case the US is NOT trying to influence the outcome of local politics by propping up or overthrowing a government. We're just helping a 4-nation coalition hunt down a mass murderer in their midst, which will hopefully allow us to cut the $10 million per year we've been spending on the effort.

Do you ever wonder why it is that the African countries involved in the struggle with the LRA just can't seem to kill off the rather small group that is the LRA?

It's not like the LRA has any sort of real local support.

As evil as the LRA is, and I think right now they set a gold standard for evil, the entrenched incompetence of the African states involved will probably render moot what little aid 100 US service men can provide.

Count me in with young Hegelian--even if we kill this murderous bastard, there will be another murderous bastard to take his place.

100 advisors (and I suspect this means special ops troops) may be successful, but the infection that is Africa will continue to supperate.

And having established the precedent to intervene for humanitarian purposes, how do we sort out which intervention is necessary? Syria? North Korea, Beylorus? Gaza? Zimbabwe? There are more bad guys out there than we have troops for.

Libya apparently was the precedent and while I dont normally subscribe to slippery slope arguments, it seems it might be appropriate now.

It will be interesting to see how this intervention plays out. We can probably kill this guy Kony but there will be some other murderous bastard to take his place.

And David posted while I was slaving away at the key board--trust me folks--its a hundred special ops guys on the ground who will be supported by at least 10 times the amount of troops needed for combat support.

I suspect there will be several thousand US military involved in the operation.

Most of Africa is hopeless - they rushed into independence from colonialism too quickly, and this is the result. Providing aid just strengthens those who are in charge, because the aid funnels through them.

100 armed advisors (and who precisely are they advising) is a fart in a whirlwind. A brigade might be a muscular intervention.

You have more experience than I, but wouldn't an SF company, which is what is apparently being sent (I've only found one oblique reference, so it could be a CA or PsyOp detachment for all I know) be a fairly significant, and powerful, investment?

This is nothing new. We have had troops in Africa for years now. Often special forces and usually in small numbers.

We even have an "African Command"

The United States Africa Command (USAFRICOM or AFRICOM) is one of ten Unified Combatant Commands of the United States Armed Forces, headquartered at Kelley Barracks, Stuttgart, Germany. It is responsible for U.S. military operations and military relations with 53 African nations – an area of responsibility covering all of Africa except Egypt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africa_Command

We also have troops on the ground, in small numbers, in all sorts of hot spots around the world. Read Robert Kaplan's "Imperial Grunts" and "Hog Pilots and Blue Water Grunts"

For a good if grim novel about Uganda under Idi Amin, Donald Westlake's "Kawaha" can't be beat. It is about the theft of a train carrying the entire Ugandan coffee harvest from under Amin's nose.

If 100 guys can help in this horrible situation that is Uganda, I am OK with it. Think of it as training for our guys. They get valuable experience out of something like this. At the same time our guys are benefitting, we are maybe doing some good.

I believe in a broad definition of what's within American strategic interests. I think Libya counted, for example, because we can't have renegade despots with billions in petrodollars breaking their parole and defying international conventions, especially where they have a history of projecting successful anti-U.S. terrorism around the world and of developing WMDs.

But nothing in Uganda — a landlocked country in sub-Saharan Africa — implicates American strategic interests in the slightest. This is America as the World's Policeman, nothing less. The House ought to vote de-fund the entire enterprise immediately. (My extended take is at my own blog.)

John gives a good summary of the unified command structure. Here's my take on this operation. My approach were I still on the Joint Staff, would be to use small unit operations with highly trained hunter killer units to go after key people on the bad side. We have done this quite successfully with drones, and with the killing of OBL. The mid east, however, is considerably different that sub saharan Africa. Drones are probably less useful and require some substantial infrastructure.

Security operations in disputed areas are far more problematic and require many more troops on the ground.

I think the approach in africa, as I read between the lines, is to use highly trained special ops people for targeted killings. The downside, of course, is that we run out of special ops guys in a hurry. They are a valuable asset.

The only thing that strikes me about this operation (and I do think this Kony asshole needs killing) is why we would announce it? These things, IMO, are best left as black operations. Get the job done and leave--the bad guys will know.

Beldar--I am of two minds on this. I agree absolutely that we have no one strategic interest in sub-saharan africa. But sometimes the evil is so stark we MAY be compelled to take a stand.

In a perfect world the administration should have consulted with congress sub rosa and with appropriate concurrence proceeded. I doubt that happened because Obama is a major asshole and I see Ms Powers fingerprints all over this.

All I can say is if Kony is whacked the world will be a better place even if the legalities were not observed. I know that is a dangerous position to take and can lead to more abusive situations. its the best I can come up with now.

The LRA is worse than Theodorus by an order of magnitude. The Brits went in because of the hostage insult rather than for humanitarian reasons. But the difference in military effectiveness between Napier's army and Theodorus and US Special Forces and LRA is probably similar.

The actual fighting at Magdala was done by a pretty small force, the tip of a big spear of logistics that made it all possible.

It is no joke when a single mother's son is sent into harms way and the national interest is not at stake. The President and Althouse don't have the courtesy to pretend that there is the slightest threat to American interests from these criminals. The simple fact that they are evil, one among many things as equally evil, is thought to justify the introduction of combat forces into a world we have no national interest in and have never gone before. It won't be a joke when the casualties come back, no siree.

My wife and son have both done mission trips to Uganda with their primary destinations Kampala and Kitgum. We currently support missionaries and several children in Kitgum and have supported Far Reaching Ministries which has protected children from the LRA.

The great irony in all this is that the LRA backed off during the Bush administration because of their fear that Bush would send troops into Uganda.

We believe the LRA is the epitome of evil. Nevertheless, we are concerned that this administration appears committed to the assassination of individual miscreants while it ignores greater evil, for example the genocide threatened against South Sudan.

Throw away the book on this one. Forget the use of a 100 "armed advisors" to assist government forces. That's using them as force multipliers training soldiers that will take months and months to questionable effect. All politics, all the time.

Go outside to professional mercenaries. There are plenty out there with experience in Africa (many, no doubt in this particulat AO). One battalion (about 250 men) could be put together in no time. Outfit them as a light infantry brigade and send them in. Very cost effective and over the long term human-life effective as well.

There actually has been a group of men in just this sort of endeavor who were put out of business (legally) because their successes scared the living shit out of all the powers that be in Africa.

You want to help human beings—cast the die—get in do the killing that needs to be done. Then get the hell out before the NGOs and the social workers show up.

Given how gruesome the violence is, I can see a rationale for some kind of peace-keeping intervention, but not a unilateral insertion of American military forces. This is the kind of thing the United Nations is supposed to be for.

There actually has been a group of men in just this sort of endeavor who were put out of business (legally) because their successes scared the living shit out of all the powers that be in Africa.

I believe you're thinking of Executive Outcomes. They took care of a similar situation in Sierra Leone in the mid 90s, defeating a marauding child army and bringing peace to the country. Then the powers that be brought in Cook's beloved UN peacekeepers, who proceeded to let the place go to shit again.

On the one hand, I like the idea of whacking this evil bastard, and all the others like him.

On the other, I'm pretty sure we can't actually manage to whack all the others like him, at least with a massive re-prioritizing of our national budget, so I'd like a better justification than "he's an evil bastard".

It's worth a shot. However, my intuition is that evil this ghastly is too deeply rooted and pervasive to be defeated by a small number of special op forces. Some societies have so many pathogens that an outsider is more likely to spread the infection than lance the boil when he intervenes. See Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and--dollars to donuts--Libya.

There was a somewhat similar strange militant group in a country in West Africa and a paramilitary group was quite effective against them until some international law type group was able to stop the paramilitary so that the killing could continue. The point is, it was a very small group of hired killers and it worked. I would like to see Kony killed.

Killing Kony cannot, in and of itself, be objectionable; but do we have good reason to think this cycle of depravity would be concluded by his elimination?

Not to be grand guignol, but in the short-term at least, this army of child soldiers is going to caper around like the maddened zombies in "28 Days Later". And our Special Ops will have the terrible privilege of defending themselves by shooting them.

Do you have any idea how tractless that area is? It's not like there's some big gleaming LRA Headquarters building that shows up in sattelite photos. Every non-trivial article I read about UAV operations makes mention of how vital HUMINT is in determining targeting.

As someone who actually lived in the area in question, I'm certainly happy they're getting help.

And to everyone who's fretting about "escalation": relax, there's nowhere to escalate. Kony and his band of crazies are a small group, not a part of any government, and not backed by anyone. There's nowhere up for this deployment to go.

If 100 Special Ops forces are on their way there now, how many clandestine CIA operatives are already in-country? Obama seems to have a penchant for using the CIA to do the real dirty jobs, which may allow him to avoid having to answer to any Congressional armed services committee with oversight. You never know when some pesky Congress critter might object to a unilateral "kinetic military action" or leak a secret to the press that could prove embarrassing.

I question the timing, to quote a thousand liberals during the last two republican administrations. This slaughter has been going on for years. Why haven't they acted before this? Do Fast and Furious, Solyndra, slipping poll numbers, and a looming electIon have something to do with it?

Why announce this? We have very small deployments like this all over the world, and we don't announce their arrival. That makes Obama's motives even more suspect. And it might compromise the mission.

I really am loathe to suggest that the POTUS might be this much of an amoral power-mad asshole, but the last three years have left me disillusioned.

Kony is a nasty son-of-a-bitch, and one of my former colleagues, Faith McDonnell, who has worked with Christians in the area has been giving me an earful about him for years. She actually wrote a book about it, called Girl Soldier, with a Ugandan woman, Grace Akallo, who was kidknapped and forced into Kony's army as a child soldier.

In any case, Kony and the LRA probably need to be taken care of by someone. I'm not sure the US has built up the kind of local ties necessary to make an effective go of it. And we certainly haven't had anything like a public debate over the merits of doing so. I'm open to an argument over it, but we haven't had that yet. Like Libya, Obama seems to think he can sidestep this. Agree or not over Iraq and Afghanistan, there were serious, open public considerations of both before boots hit the ground.

There's much more than a mere 'humanitarian' angle here. Uganda anchors South Sudan's southern flank, and the LRA have some history of working with those who caused so much grief to the southern Sudanese for a couple of decades.

Uganda is not an insignificant country -- population roughly equal to that of Canada -- and as a result of George Bush's efforts and attention have become a strong friend of the US in a somewhat nasty neighborhood.

What I suspect our operators will be doing is to embed with Ugandan units. Unlike many African militaries, Uganda does not conscript and requires a secondary education of its enlistees.

Compare to Afghanistan where something like 70% of the ANA cannot read a manual in any language.

Most of our guys will probably be teaching small unit tactics to more senior NCOs and commissioned officers up to about O-3. They'll accompany them on missions and give practical guidance as they go.

What they'll have some trouble fixing is the logistics, and I would be unsurprised if some of the first reports back from the US contingent did not ask for assistance with logistics training and so on.

Strategically I suspect the effort is intended to ensure the existence of a competent, friendly military well in control of the territory between the messes in the Congo and eastern Africa.

We do NOT want those groups to link up, which is a big part of the role Kony sees for himself.

The problem is that large parts of Africa are a shit hole. Have always been a shit hole, and will always be a shit hole. Let's remember, a long time ago during the slave trade, ships showed up on the coast line of west Africa, and bought slaves from Africans who had captured these people. This Kony character is just another in a long, long line of strong arm Africans.

As others have pointed out, there are a lot of other areas of Africa where we could be sending troops if this is the criteria.

Also, when Roger J. said...its a hundred special ops guys on the ground who will be supported by at least 10 times the amount of troops needed for combat support.

I suspect there will be several thousand US military involved in the operation is exactly what I was going to say. This combat area is a long ways away from the USofA.

LRA certainly gives Christianity, Islam, and African witchcraft a bad name, but they don't constitute a threat to the US. The Left objected to our use of the military in Afganistan (from which an attack on the US was launched) and Iraq (where a madman was attacking neighboring countries as well as killing his own people, and supporting terrorism. How can they support the executive branch deciding to use military support against the LRA.

The problem is that large parts of Africa are a shit hole. Have always been a shit hole, and will always be a shit hole. Let's remember, a long time ago during the slave trade, ships showed up on the coast line of west Africa, and bought slaves from Africans who had captured these people. This Kony character is just another in a long, long line of strong arm Africans.

Allen

People will call you a racist pig, but the problem is: every word you say is true.

Meanwhile, we have Zero national interest in intervening here. At home, we're tetering on another great depression (actually, probably started already), spending 40% more annually than we take in, have a national debt that can never be paid back, have entitlement obligations, along with gov't pensions and insurance, that can't politically be changed, but can't actually be paid, vast corruption in Wash DC ... etc.

What the hell. Let's send 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 troops to some Godforsaken country half a planet away, let them die and be maimed there for a decade or two, make believe we are creating a "democracy,", piss away another trillion or two we have to borrow from China, and create a whole new continent full of black people who hate our guts for killing their citizens. Sure. Great idea. And don't bother voting on it either. Just chuck the Constitution in the garbage.

Hahahaha...puh-leeze! It's a dead letter, along with the Bill of Rights and, effectively, the Constitution. The President now has effective power to send our military anywhere to inflict any violence on anyone, without Congress having any say in the matter, and international law and sovereignty of other nations be damned.

In a broader sense, doesn't anybody here understand what China is attempting to do in Africa, often in collaboration with militant islamists?

The imperialist meddling in Africa, like so much else these days, says "Made in China." Most Africans don't like it, long for a different future, and recognise implicitly that any US "imperialism" is far lighter and far more beneficial than that of England, France, Germany, Belgium, Portugal ... or China.

Keep it up and while we have our fingers in 10 different places some country like CHINA will start a war with us and we simply will not be able to fight them all.

We are in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, South Korea (you guys do remember that nutjob, Kim, is still in charge of NK, right?) We have Zetas in Mexico, Chavez in Venezuela, Egypt about to have ANOTHER revolution thanks to guns coming in from.... Libya (see above.)

And so our president decides to go and get involved in another country? Oh, yea, politics 101.. if the internal situation is grim, distract the people with an external situation.

And that is what he is doing. Distraction from 9.1 percent unemployment, debt, default, Gunwalker, SOLYNDRA, etc...

Interesting how the announcement appeared on Friday, just like the announcement that the CLASS Act had been killed. Meanwhile the MSM were still tingling about the morons "occupying" the country. CBS even had a map with "occupied" states painted in blue.

I served in the American Foreign Service in two of the countries that are to be included in the theater of operations for this latest adventure, and I can vouch for the fact that the USG had very little interest in that region of the world then. I should think it is of even less interest now that our military is stretched so thin. For Obama to engage us in central Africa because of "vital American interests" is a non-starter. Yes, the LRA is a brutal organization. If stopping brutal organizations is in the US national interest we're going to have to expand, not contract, our military.

the mineral worth of the Democratic Republic of Congo is estimated at over 24 trillion. do we grab it and pay off the natl. debt, or just further line the pockets of the mega-rich. is that really why we are there under the banner of humanitarian acts? i mean, Europe had its chance to rape African wealth, now is it our turn? sure, the LRA is, from all i've read, agressively evil; on the other hand, there was an article in The Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk) noting how the LRA was convinced to support the preservation of the white rhino, an endangered species, few left, and refuses to kill or eat rhino or use and export the horn for medicinal purposes as so many African countries allow. then of course there are the indigenous people of the forest and congo river, hunted and casually killed by ALL sides in the protracted wars - hunted as game animals(!), thought of as not even human, killed and eaten(!), active and continuing acts of genocide, and well-documented, but the UN refuses to do anything since the pygmies have no status as a nation being forest dwelling nomadic people who, like gypsies, when they try to settle near a Congolese town for the sake of their children and education, are driven away or killed, and no African country, and certainy not the u.s., will do anything at all to protect them.... (well, we have to trust Obama on Africa, don't we, i mean, he's from there..er..i mean his father is. and he does seem to like short round women, appointing two the Court, one to the UN.)

"It seems to me, that the preponderance of commenters on Althouse Blog, thus far, believe, and take at face value the validity and honesty of the subject matter at hand, though no track record can be offered to substantiate such trust"

See my previous comment above, which I'm fairly certain "F" will back me up on. You can't just tell the Hellfire "go find Kony", you have to give it (or the parent UAV) his ICBM coordinates, to at least get close enough for visual identification. So we need people on the ground, and I'm fairly willing to be the Ugandans/South Sudanese/Congolese, valiant troops though they might be, don't have what it takes to get us that information today.

We aren't the world's policemen. Fuck this and most military interventions. I'm all for free trade and protecting our interests, but sending our soldiers to their deaths over these foreign ventures is what's vile.

Once you start trotting out the excuse that we should intervene wherever there is evil afoot, there is no end to it.

Freeman Hunt said... No way do I object to that intervention. Were I a soldier, I'd be honored to fight against such deep evil.

How does your personal willingness to enter that fight bear on U.S. policy? Should we make "deep evil" a sufficient ground to deploy troops?

If so, what of the deep evils in, Zimbabwe, in Syria, in Libya, in North Korea, in China, in Cuba, etc., etc., etc.? Following your sentiments, which deep evil could we NOT send American soldiers to fight against?

One of our greatest dangers right now is that The One is acting on the very blonde logic that you and Althorse propound.

What's evil about this is announcing it. The point of having an SOF capability is to be able to go in somewhere without announcing the fact, without painting "Shoot Me" signs on the troops. Compare the Libyan deployment: not only were US SOF units in there from the start (you don't drop bombs without targeting assets on the ground) but care was taken to deny their presence, at least at first.

Some want to send US troops to stop evil anywhere in the world. They never mention stopping President Millstone Loose Lips. Now there's a cat who hates the military on principle and has been using them up gaily to both exhaust/deplete/embarrass them and to help his friends, because he can. Yes he can.

The opening scene after the credits of Casino Royale (the recent movie of that title) depicts an LRA camp in Uganda, replete with boy fighters/catamites.

Isn't the average age of the African Sub-Saharan population around 16 years? Using slaves or "conscripts" as catamites and fighters is traditional Mohammedan practice. In Turkey once, first born sons of non-Mohammedans were confiscated for that purpose. Arab societies today tend to run on labor by non-Arabs and their militaries tend to weakness for the same reason: allergy to work.

The US definitely has strategic interests in all of Africa (thus the existence of AFRICOM) especially, as mentioned by a commentator, in re Chinese penetration of the continent. Pursuing US interests is a prerogative of the US being a nation state.

The evil here is not going in (a reality for decades), it's announcing the fact of an SOF deployment. Might as well give their order of battle as well. There is evil in the White House.

Kirk, these "trainers" aren't going to do shit. If they want to be effective, they will have to start conducting extra-legal operations or teaching those being trained how to do it. The end result is always the same for the simple reason that to fight an irregular army, you have to become irregular. With a disciplined force, such as the special forces of most first world countries, this can be highly effective. In third world shit holes, these irregular armies have a way of getting out of control. They become death squads, killing people rather indiscriminately and prolifically. Often, they end up as bad as or worse than the enemy.

In particular consider this paragraph from the NY Times story, along with the fairly unique circumstances of the LRA and the area it operates in:

"American efforts to combat the group also took place during the administration of President George W. Bush, which authorized the Pentagon to send a team of 17 counterterrorism advisers to train Ugandan troops and provided millions of dollars worth of aid, including fuel trucks, satellite phones and night-vision goggles, to the Ugandan Army. Those efforts scattered segments of the Lord’s Resistance Army in recent years; its remnants dispersed and regrouped in Uganda’s neighbors. In spring 2010, apparently desperate for new conscripts, Mr. Kony’s forces killed hundreds of villagers in the Congolese jungle and kidnapped hundreds more, according to witnesses interviewed at the time. Unlike the earlier effort, the 100 military advisers sent by Mr. Obama will be armed. They will be providing assistance and advice to their African hosts, Mr. Obama said, and “will not themselves engage LRA forces unless necessary for self-defense.” "